The course near the Statue of Liberty has rebuilt greens and altered fairways.

Not too many years ago, Liberty National Golf Club—site of the Barclays, this week's showcase PGA Tour playoffs event—was a toxic landfill. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore," says the plaque inside the Statue of Liberty, only about 2,000 yards from the 18th green.

Until the early 1990s, when reclamation work began at the site, Lady Liberty didn't have far to look for wretched refuse.

ENLARGE

Tiger Woods on Wednesday during the pro-am at Liberty National Golf Course.
The Jersey Journal/Associated Press

To hear some players tell it when the Tour was last here for the Barclays in 2009, the site was still a dump. "They took a perfectly good landfill and ruined it," one pro joked, anonymously. "It's interesting," Tiger Woods told the press. In a good way? "It's interesting," he repeated.

In reality, a lot of pros liked the course. Phil Mickelson thought so much of Liberty National he joined as a member. "I love it. I love it because I think the shots around the greens have been very well thought out," he said in 2009. Several European players liked it, too, for the difficult, undulating greens and strategic fairways. Padraig Harrington called it "fantastic."

But the negative comments got most of the press. As Nick Watney acknowledged Tuesday, some of the pros turned dissing Liberty National into a sport. "It definitely seems like once the ice is broken, then people pile on," Watney said.

Tom Kite, the 1992 U.S. Open champion and one of course's co-designers, with Robert Cupp, said the criticisms stung.

"To be honest, yeah, it hurt," Kite said this week. "When you put as much time and effort into it as Bob and I and Paul Fireman [the owner] did, and you try to build it as good as possible—it's your baby. Nobody wants to hear somebody say that your child's ugly, but that's basically what they were telling us."

Kite and Cupp got involved with the Liberty National project in 1992. It opened in 2006 at a cost of $250 million.

Because of the extraordinary setting, with views of the Manhattan skyline across New York Harbor, the PGA Tour and title sponsor Barclays are eager to keep Liberty National as one of the rotating host sites for the annual event. The Barclays returns to Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J. in 2014; Plainfield Country Club in Edison, N.J. in 2015; and Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, N.Y., where Watney won last year, in 2016.

With the negative player comments in mind, the Tour advised Liberty that if wanted to continue as a site for the Barclays beyond this year, when its contract ends, it needed to make some changes. At great expense, Fireman, who built Reebok International Inc. into a shoe and apparel giant, rehired Kite and Cupp to do just that.

The pros' biggest complaints concerned the greens. They were too slopey and the falloffs around them were too severe. They also griped that the fairways were too narrow, the rough too high and that drives had a way of collecting in the same spots, too often in divots.

Kite and Cupp, in consultation with the PGA Tour, reworked 11 greens, rebuilding five of them completely. They altered 13 fairways, added a first cut of moderate rough and moved the 18th green to open up more space for corporate hospitality.

Most of the changes, Kite said, were subtle, but he admitted that some of the original greens, running at tournament speeds, did get out of hand. "In 20/20 hindsight, in a couple of places, we probably pushed it over the edge a little," he said. "But we were building the course in anticipation of high-level pro competition, and we wanted to make sure it challenged the best players in the world."

All courses evolve, he pointed out. Augusta National, home of the Masters, gets tweaked every year, sometimes significantly. "I'd hazard a guess these won't be the last changes to Liberty, either," Kite said. "We just hope now it won't be too easy."

We'll know by Sunday, when the tournament ends. Thus far the reviews have been good, including from Woods. "They made some really nice improvements," the world No. 1 said Wednesday. Woods, complaining of a sore neck, played only nine holes of his pro-am match Wednesday. He walked the other nine just chipping and putting.

The Barclays is the first of the Tour's four, enormously rich, season-ending FedExCup Playoffs events. Each one has an $8 million purse, with another $35 million in bonus money distributed at the end, including $10 million to the winner.

Woods, with five wins this season, enters the Playoffs with a commanding 766-point lead over second-place Matt Kuchar. Another 75 points behind is Brandt Snedeker. Those three players will tee off Thursday 8:15 a.m. Eastern. The next three top-seeded pros, Phil Mickelson, Bill Haas and Billy Horschel, tee off at 1:06 p.m. The Playoffs culminate at the Tour Championship in Atlanta on Sept. 22.

Corrections & Amplifications Plainfield Country Club is in Edison, N.J. An earlier version of this article said it is in Plainfield. Also, Brandt Snedeker is 75 points behind Matt Kuchar in points on the season. An earlier version of this article said he was 78 points behind.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.